"Rock or plastic ?" Part II

The last few weeks have been quite busy so I had not that much time to update this blog but to be honest this is just an excuse for the fact that I've simply been too lazy. I just came home from one of the many competitions and because I've some time now I forced myself to write a new blog post.

Ale making the second ascent of this beautiful line in Schenna

Between all the competitions I took part lately, luckily I found some time to get to climb on some rock. I went to Schenna twice, where I am always amazed by the amount of climbed problems and projects that still have to be climbed. With a couple of friends we managed to do a few amazing first ascents and climbed some of the already existing boulders.

The new landing

Since the bouldering area in Schenna is kind of "secret" there is no guide book or no topo and consequently most of the boulders are not even graded. So basically you get there and you climb whatever is inspiring you. That's what makes Schenna so special for me.

Moreover I finally had the opportunity to go to Pontives again. Since I climbed "Lose Yourself" I've not been in Pontives anymore, perhaps also because I had no real project, and so I was motivated to brush some new lines and hopefully also climb them. Eventually I decided to finish cleaning this awesome, tall line, which my friend Martin Dejori and I started cleaning already about two years ago. After spending three days into building a decent landing and brushing off all the moss, I finally started trying the boulder. I haven't climbed the problem yet, but Rudi, who tried the boulder with me, managed to climb the left exit, adding a new 5 star line to the area.

As I already mentioned, I had a lot of competitions in the last few weeks, including an Italian Cup in Ivrea, the Italian Youth Championship in Arco, two World Cups in Kitzbühel and Log Dragomer, the European Youth Championship in Grindelwald and the Climbo. The last one was the European Youth Cup in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Unfortunately there were missing most of the strong guys so I knew that it wouldn't be difficult to get into finals. After a good qualification round I was sitting in first place having done all the 8 boulders.
The finals on the day after where as good as the qualifications, and I managed to cope with the pressure winning in front of my friends David Firnenburg from Germany and Alex Khazanov from Israel.

Qualification round

Second boulder in the final